While Ingrid Croce keeps her husband's memory alive 30 years after his death, musician son A.J. finds peace with the legacy of a famous father he barely knew

By George Varga POP MUSIC CRITIC

October 12, 2003

Ingrid Croce photo

Jim and A.J. Croce pose for a photo in 1971, two years before Jim's death.

A.J. Croce was just a week shy of his second birthday when his father, singer-songwriter Jim Croce, was killed in a Louisiana plane crash on Sept. 20, 1973. Jim was 30 when he died, only two years younger than A.J. (short for Adrian James) is today.

Thirty years to the week after his father's death, A.J. and his mother, Ingrid, sit down on a couch together in the secluded Banker's Hill home she shares with her second husband, Jim Rock.

A.J., a gifted musician with four albums to his credit, ponders at length whether he has even one distinct memory of his late father, whose hits included "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown," "I Got a Name" and the whimsical "You Don't Mess Around With Jim."

"The only thing I can remember was not actually seeing him or remembering an image of him, but something that I heard him say," recalls A.J., who bears a striking visual resemblance to his dad and was the inspiration for his father's posthumously released 1973 chart-topper, "Time in a Bottle."

"He was talking to me and I remember being held by him," A.J. continues. "And he looked down at me, and said: 'Don't be an ass----.' "

Ingrid, who is seated next to her son in an airy room decorated with several vintage ukuleles, laughs with delight.

"Actually," she clarifies, "it went more like: 'Whatever you do, Adrian, don't be an ass----.' It's not a bad thing to pass on, is it?"

But A.J.'s knowledge of his dad is far greater after completing a two-year-long collaboration with his mother to co-produce a new DVD, "Have You Heard: Jim Croce Live," and a CD, "Jim Croce Home Recordings: Americana," featuring vintage songs recorded in 1967.

A.J. compiled and cataloged hundreds of tapes for the project, which he then digitized and transferred to various software programs. Ingrid painstakingly obtained all the necessary legal clearances.

Both releases are due out Tuesday on Shout! Factory, a Los Angeles-based label started by the co-founder of Rhino Records and two other music-biz veterans. A.J. and Ingrid serve as narrators on the DVD, the making of which both describe as an emotional but cathartic experience.

Working on the DVD and CD heightened A.J.'s appreciation of his dad's life with Ingrid, who had just turned 16 when she met Jim in Philadelphia in 1963 (and wed him three years later). A.J. also discovered new personal and musical bonds he shares with the father he scarcely knew.

"I had heard my dad's music at home when I was growing up," says A.J., who lives in University Heights with his wife, Marlo, their daughter, Camille, 13, and son Elijah, 6. "But it was really while doing this project that I got to know these recordings and a side of my father I never knew, and it was very emotional at times. I discovered that some of the songs I played at my concerts when I was 18 or 19 – like Fats Waller's 'You're Not the Only Oyster in the Stew' and Bessie Smith's 'Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out' – were the same ones my dad played when he was young.

"I found all kinds of things I never realized we had in common before. It gave me an appreciation for what his later music would become, and – in some ways – what my later music would become. So it was an amazing experience. I was listening to his history and also sort of listening to mine as well. I guess certain genes are passed down. . . . "

Ingrid, who in 1969 recorded a duo album for Capitol Records, "Approaching Day," with Jim, regards the timing of the DVD and CD as a happy matter of fate. While she hopes the public response will be favorable, she is thrilled by the benefits she and her son have already reaped.

"It's been 30 years since Jim died," notes Ingrid, who has devoted herself to keeping his music and memory alive. "And it's been a lifetime of A.J. hearing people ask: 'What is it like to be Jim Croce's son?' It was a burden because he didn't know Jim Croce. So doing this project, finding the common ties and being approximately the same age now as Jim was when he died, marks a full circle that's been completed."

The joint release of the DVD and CD also marks the start of a major campaign to reintroduce Jim Croce to his original fan base and expose him to a new generation of listeners, many of whom were not even born 30 years ago. Such a quest wasn't possible until Ingrid and A.J. finally secured the legal rights to Jim's music a few years ago.

Their legal battle began soon after his death, when Ingrid launched 12 years of litigation to obtain back royalties for the songs of her husband, who didn't live long enough to see the financial rewards his work eventually would bring. Regaining the copyrights to his songs took 18 more years.

"The irony is that, 30 years after his passing, we've been able to finally pay tribute to Jim in our own way, with things that belonged to us but that we were never allowed to use until now," explains Ingrid, who with A.J. is launching Croce Entertainment to release future albums by A.J. and her late husband.

"We have enough material to release a new album by Jim every year for at least the next 10 years."

On tap for early next year is Ingrid's photographic memoir-cum-songbook salute to Jim's music, "Time in a Bottle," which she envisions as a companion piece to the just-released DVD.

Also due next year is a CD re-release of "Facets," Jim's self-produced, 1966 solo debut album. It has not been available since the original pressing of 500 vinyl albums sold out the week they were released in Philadelphia, where A.J. and both his parents were born.

Then there are two Jim Croce signature acoustic guitars, which will be issued next year by Gibson and Epiphone, respectively. They follow two limited-edition Martin guitar Jim Croce models, which sold out last year.

This spate of activity pays homage to a musician whose death came just as he was on the verge of achieving significant stardom, in and beyond the world of music. Coincidentally, Croce's grave is the most prominent of the six pictured on the cover of the new book "The Tombstone Tourist," which is subtitled: "(A Music Lover's Guide to All the Graves, Shrines and Memorabilia of Late, Great Legends of Rock, Jazz, Blues, Country and R&B!")

The Croces had moved to San Diego in August 1973, so that Jim could be close to Los Angeles (where neither he nor Ingrid wanted to reside). They settled in a cozy home in Point Loma.

Jim had been invited that summer to serve as a guest host for "The Tonight Show, starring Johnny Carson," on which he had performed several times. He was also set to co-star in a feature film with counterculture comedy star Cheech Marin of Cheech & Chong. Those plans ended with the September plane crash that killed Jim and five others, including his musical partner, guitarist Maury Muehleisen.

"I really don't remember much about Point Loma then, except it was near the airport and that was important," says Ingrid, who was 26 when Jim died. "Because it meant Jim, who was on tour 360 days a year, could fly in for a day. If we had 24 hours together in three weeks, that was great."

His breakthrough hit, after years of struggling to be widely heard, was 1972's upbeat "You Don't Mess Around With Jim." It was followed by five more Top 40 hits within the next year. These included "Operator (That's Not the Way It Feels)," "One Less Set of Footsteps" and "I Got a Name," which was featured in the film "The Last American Hero."

Jim's well-crafted brand of pop drew from folk, blues, country and rock. A gifted raconteur, he was nearly as entertaining introducing his songs, with colorful anecdotes about his days in basic training and driving trucks, as he was singing them.

His broad melodic and lyrical appeal made him one of the few artists of the early 1970s to be embraced by both mainstream AM and more adventuresome FM radio formats. Jim's warm, expressive voice was silenced just as his music was starting to blossom.

It was a voice A.J. grew up hearing on records by a father he hardly knew and spent years distancing himself from.

"When I was younger, not knowing my father, it was hard for me to do interviews and be asked questions about him," A.J. recalls. "I really knew very little about him. Being involved in these projects now, I have an opportunity to take part in and share something new, and at the same time help those questions be answered on their own by the music itself.

"Being involved with his music in this way has made me a lot more comfortable with him, with talking about him and about the similarities and differences we have."

A.J. was 21 when his self-titled debut album was released on the Private Music label in 1993. After years of resisting entreaties from record companies and concert promoters to perform his father's music, it is only recently that he has felt comfortable enough with his own artistic identity to do so.

"With a lot of people that are the sons or daughters of (famous) musicians, you really have an identity crisis," observes A.J., who performs Friday at Victor's in Pacific Beach with fellow San Diego singer-songwriter Steve Poltz and Fastball's Tony Scalzo.

"Your renown is a byproduct of someone else's. I never felt I wanted to ride on my dad's coattails or use his songs to gain notoriety, because that wasn't what I was looking for. But after a certain point I felt comfortable with who I was, not just musically but as a person. Because of that, I feel including a song of my dad's from time to time in my concerts now is as appropriate as including a song by Ray Charles, Paul McCartney or anyone else."

In addition to 15 live performances, the "Have You Heard: Jim Croce Live" DVD includes an array of home movies and still photos of Jim, Ingrid and a very young A.J., as well as posthumous reminiscences about Jim from such musical pals as Randy Newman and Loggins & Messina. The DVD's narration by Ingrid and A.J. is unmistakably reverent, although Ingrid doesn't shy away from addressing temptations Jim faced on the road with many eager groupies.

"It was a time of sexual experimentation and we were young," she reflects. "For most musicians, it was an acceptable thing to do on the road; for me, it never was."

Ultimately, the DVD and CD releases stand as a testament to Jim's still-fetching music, as well as to Ingrid and A.J.'s ability to survive (and eventually thrive) in the aftermath of his death.

Ingrid struggled with being a young, jobless widow in an unknown new city. A.J. developed brain tumor syndrome when he was 4 and was legally blind for several years; he now has vision only in his left eye. Ingrid has been unable to sing since she developed a tumor on her vocal cords in the mid-1980s, shortly before she opened Croce's Restaurant and Jazz Bar in the Gaslamp Quarter (on the very corner she and Jim posed for a 1973 photo the
month before his death).

But mother and son are more in harmony now than ever before. They have been brought closer together by A.J.'s posthumous bonding with his dad and Ingrid's joy that, when the time comes, her only child will maintain the legacy of his late father.

"I feel a great sense of relief that the torch has been passed," Ingrid says. "Even though I still hold the torch, I feel confident that, if I were to pass away (soon), A.J. is ready and able to handle it. A.J. was never his father. He was always himself, and I see that much more clearly today. Yet, this project has connected them more than anything else before.

"Instead of being called upon to duplicate or explain his father, he's actually producing his father (on CD and DVD). And that's a wonderful place for A.J to be, and for me. Because what we feel is that keeping Jim's music out there for the public is very important, so people don't forget it."